The procession of life

A curious detail of the Elijah story we just heard is that we’re told what the name of the city was where it took place, but we don’t know the names of the widow and her son. The woman showed remarkable hospitality sharing her last morsel of food with the prophet, but we only know her as the widow of Zarephath. And her son we only know as the son of the widow of Zarephath. It appears that to the people who first told the story, the name of the city was a crucial detail because it was outside of Israel. The prophet had left the kingdom. Elijah and King Ahab of Israel made each other’s blood boil because one maintained that a king’s power was a king’s power and the other insisted that even the king had to submit to the justice of God. Now the prophet had left the kingdom and with him God’s power to bless and heal: while a severe drought dried up the land and destroyed the harvest on the fields, miracles of hospitality and of life restored happened not in Israel, but on foreign soil, in Zarephath of Sidon. A widow from north of the border recognized what the king of Israel couldn’t or wouldn’t see. Ahab and Jezebel may have their names written in the royal chronicles of Israel, but it turned out that a nameless widow who didn’t even belong to God’s covenant people knew more about the power of Israel’s God to bring forth life than Israel’s king and queen.

Luke tells us a Jesus story that taps deeply into this prophetic tradition and presents Jesus as one greater than a prophet. Again the widow and her son remain unnamed, but we’re told that the town’s name was Naïn. The town isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, only in this story. Naïn is about 5 miles south of Nazareth, and that’s all we know about the town. Luke tells us that Jesus, the disciples and a large crowd were coming from Capernaum, that’s about 25 miles. But why tell us the name of the town and not the name of the man who walked home from his own funeral? Don’t you think everybody in Naïn knew who he was?

I have heard or read these yoked stories many times and listened for the word of God in them. This time I was drawn to the curious detail that central characters in both stories remain anonymous. And I thought about how often namelessness is part of the stories we hear day in and day out, stories that are more like statistics: so many boating accidents after a summer weekend; so many missing passengers presumed dead after an airplane crash in the Mediterranean; so many people killed after spring floods and tornadoes; so many girls obducted from schools in Nigeria and still missing. We hear nameless statistics that hide the real stories of lives changed forever, the lives of men, women, and children, the lives of sisters and boyfriends, grandfathers and neighbors, wives and sons and classmates, the real stories in which we’re each part of a web of relationships that have made us uniquely and irreplaceably who we are, relationships that we in turn have made and shaped.

I was thinking about these things when I heard a news story about a city in Syria called Daraya. I knew less about Daraya than about Naïn, but learned that on Wednesday the first Red Cross convoy had entered that town, in the first such delivery since a government-imposed siege began in 2012. People in Daraya have no access to essential services, such as running water and electricity, and systematic bombing by Syrian government forces has destroyed most buildings. Only about 8,000 people remain in Daraya, which had a population of about 80,000 before the war. What little food can be grown amid the ruins is not enough. The convoy on Wednesday carried some medical supplies, vaccines, and baby formula, but no food.

I listened to Ailsa Chang on the radio:

Humanitarian aid has finally reached the battered Syrian city of Daraya, not far from Damascus. It was taken over four years ago by Syrian rebel forces. And after that, Syrian government forces blocked off the city, bombing it regularly. Residents have been waiting four years for help. Yesterday’s convoy made it in after Russia helped broker a two-day window of calm.

Chang interviewed one of the aid workers who made it into Daraya, Pawel Krzysiek with the International Committee of the Red Cross, asking him how people reacted when they first arrived in Daraya.

KRZYSIEK: So contrary to what we expected, coming with a very limited humanitarian aid to Daraya, the people greeted us very positively. They were smiling. You could see on their faces they were happy to see us. I mean, maybe because we were one of the very first humanitarian workers reaching this town, everyone was very positive, but had only one request to us.

CHANG: What was that request?

KRZYSIEK: Please come back with food actually because we didn’t have food on this very convoy.

“Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that,” Chang interjected. “I understood that you were able to bring medicine and baby milk but no food. Why couldn’t you bring food this time?”

KRZYSIEK: The humanitarian aid allowed in was sort of a confidence-building measure. I mean, we are aware that what we brought into Daraya yesterday is definitely not what the people need.

Then Chang asked him if he was struck by any of the stories people told him as they were handing out supplies, stories of how they had been surviving these past four years.

KRZYSIEK: You know, one thing that struck me a lot yesterday was when I was talking to a woman just before we [headed] out, her child, you know, just pulled her hand and asked, did they bring bread? (…) And she said, yeah, bread is definitely something that we are all dreaming about. But, no, habibi – which means honey, basically, in Arabic – no, they didn’t bring bread yet. We hope that they will bring it very, very soon. And, you know, I hope that, too.

The Red Cross worker talked about hope; hope for a mother and her child dreaming about bread in a city besieged by death; hope that a convoy of life would get through to the city very, very soon.

“Can you tell me, Pawel,” Chang asked, “I don’t understand why is it more complicated to bring bread than medicine or baby milk?”

And he responded, “I don’t know,” and again, after a long sigh, “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’m just – I’m trying to understand,” Chang said with great tenderness, and he responded, “I mean, I wish – I’m trying to understand. (…) But I’m looking for answers. And I don’t know.”

I was struck by the tenderness and the helplessness these two gave voice to on the radio. How has death become so dominant in what we have made of life? We are trying to understand. We are looking for answers. And we don’t know.

I couldn’t help but hear the stories together, the story of the nameless mother and her child in Daraya and the story of the nameless widow and her dead son in Naïn. I believe they belong together. They are tied together by the similarities of life in the grip of death, but beyond that, by the compassionate response of Christ.

Jesus approached Naïn just when a funeral procession was making its way through the city gate. A large crowd, probably the whole town, followed the stretcher with the body of a man on it. His mother had already lost her husband, and now her son, her only son. Without a husband or a son to take care of her, her future looked grim.  Widows often had to depend on the kindness of their husband’s family to survive, and many ended up sitting by the gate together with the blind and the crippled, begging neighbors and travelers for a little mercy.

The widow’s situation helps us to see that death is more than just a biological reality; it is a social reality, a moral and a spiritual reality. When we are left speechless by the fact that it is easier to drop bombs on a city than to bring bread to its hungry survivors, we have come face to face with death invading life and making it smaller, meaner, and poorer than it is meant to be.

The widow in Naïn is on her way to the cemetery for the funeral of her son, her only son, and we wonder if with him she is also going to bury her own future, her own life. Her heart is heavy with the pain of loss, but she also bears the burden of great uncertainty of what will become of her. And she is not alone. Traveling with her are the many nameless widows who only yesterday gathered sticks for one last fire to prepare one last meal for their children and themselves. Traveling with her are the mothers who tell their little ones, “no, habibi, they didn’t bring bread yet; we hope that they will bring it very, very soon.” Traveling with her are all who are trying to understand how we can be so cruel to each other in our desire for power or whatever it is we desire when we wage war against each other. Traveling with her are all who are finding it more difficult today than yesterday to sustain hope. Traveling with her are all who have seen and felt how death invades life and sucks it dry. The procession passes through the gate, and there, outside of town, coming toward them, is another procession. The two columns meet, and the Lord sees the widow, and moved with deep compassion he says to her and to all in the procession of death, “Do not weep.” And to the body on the stretcher he says, “Rise!”

This is where the procession of death stops, and not just for the time being, this is where the procession of death ends. This is where the Creator of life says “No!” to all that makes life smaller, meaner, and poorer than the fullness of God’s love desires life to be. This is where with great compassion God embraces us in the depth of our hopelessness and teaches our weary hearts to trust and to walk with Christ in the procession of life.

May all who long for fullness of life encounter the living Christ.

Only speak the word

Do you remember the story of Naaman? He was a general for the king of Aram, Israel’s neighbor and enemy in the days of the prophet Elisha. Naaman was a great man, highly regarded by his master, and he was a mighty warrior, but he had a skin disease that could end his career and cut him off from his community. Once an Aramean raiding party had gone out and captured a young girl from Israel; she served Naaman’s wife, and she said to her mistress, “I wish that my master could come before the prophet who lives in Samaria. He would cure him of his disease.” Naaman told the king of Aram what the slave girl had said, and the king responded, “Go ahead. I will send a letter to Israel’s king.”

The general’s skin trouble was about to become a diplomatic affair of the highest order. Naaman brought the letter to Israel’s king. It read, “Along with this letter I’m sending you my servant Naaman so you can cure him of his skin disease.” The king of Israel ripped his clothes and cried out, “What is this? Am I God to hand out death and life? But this king writes me, asking me to cure someone! He wants to start a fight with me.” That’s when Elisha sent word to the king, “Let the man come to me. Then he’ll know that there’s a prophet in Israel.”

Soon Naaman arrived with his horses and chariots at Elisha’s house, but the great man who spoke face to face with kings was left waiting at the door. Elisha sent out a messenger who said, “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored and become clean.” Naaman was furious. “I thought for sure that he’d come out, stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the bad spot, and cure the skin disease. Aren’t the rivers in Aram better than all Israel’s waters? Couldn’t I wash in them and get clean?”

Do you remember what happened next? Naaman’s servants came up to him and said, “If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? All he said to you was, ‘Wash and become clean.’” So Naaman went down and bathed in the Jordan seven times, just as the man of God had said. And his skin was restored like that of a young boy, and he became clean. He returned with his entourage and stood before Elisha, saying, “Now I know for certain that there’s no God anywhere on earth except in Israel.”

Great story. It portrays how fragile human power really is. The great general is ill, and it is the compassion of a slave, the wisdom of servants, and the simple instructions of a rather rude prophet that lead to his healing.

There are echoes of this ancient story in the gospel. In Luke, Jesus himself points to it in his first public teaching at home in Nazareth. He has read from the prophet Isaiah, beautiful words, powerful words announcing release to the captives, new sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor. He has declared the fulfillment of all these things in the congregation’s hearing, and they love his sermon until he opens the horizon of God’s redemption beyond Israel’s boundaries. “There were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha,” he says, “and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:27; see Luke 4:14-30). Suddenly the very people who only moments ago were amazed at his gracious words are ready to kill him by hurling him off the cliff outside of town. We recognize a powerful dynamic at work here, a kind of jealousy: humans celebrate mercy for us and our own as a blessing, and we are ready to call it a curse when mercy touches those who keep us out or whom we want to keep out. We get furious when God shows no respect for the boundaries we have drawn around one another.

Today’s gospel reading also contains echoes of that ancient story. A Roman centurion is no general, but he is a gentile and he represents the enemy. He himself is not ill, but a slave whom he values highly is near to death, and he turns to Jesus for help. The political context has changed. The land of Israel is now part of the Roman Empire and Rome maintains a sizable military presence there.

The first-century historian Josephus writes about the daily routine of Roman soldiers:

Nothing is done without a word of command. At daybreak the rank and file report themselves to their respective centurions, the centurions go to salute the tribunes, the tribunes with all the officers then wait on the commander-in-chief, and he gives them, according to custom, the watchword and other orders to be communicated to the lower ranks [Josephus, Jewish War, 3.98.].

Centurions were mid-level officers who were in command over about eighty soldiers.  Folks in Capernaum would have known this one to be the man in charge, not just over the soldiers under his command, but over the whole town. This is how a Roman historian describes the preferred qualities:

A centurion is chosen for great strength and tall stature, as a man who hurls spears and javelins skillfully and strongly, has expert knowledge how to fight with the sword and rotate the shield, and has learned the whole art of armature. He is alert, sober, and agile, and more ready to do the things ordered of him than speak, keeps his soldiers in training, makes them practice their arms, and sees that they are well clothed and shod, and that the arms are burnished and bright [Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science].

The centurion in our story is used to a life of receiving and giving orders. But surprisingly, he doesn’t command a couple of soldiers to go and order Jesus to come to his house. He sends some of the Jewish elders, asking Jesus to come and heal his slave. He recognizes in Jesus an authority like his own, but different. His world is the military, and he is confident that Jesus is in command of healing forces just like he himself is part of a chain of command. And so he addresses Jesus like he would petition a superior officer. It’s a remarkable scene; we’re looking at an officer of the Roman Empire petitioning a Galilean peasant! Something has been flipped here; something’s upside down; something has opened up.

The centurion becomes visible as a human being. He is a man whose heart is heavy and close to breaking because a loved one is sick, and he is helpless: he has no authority over the forces of healing. We may suspect that some kind of quid-pro-quo is still part of the picture, since the elders tell Jesus that this man loves their people and has built the synagogue. Certainly such a generous man is worthy of a favorable reply! But the centurion himself responds to that suspicion, sending word through a group of friends, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”

Only speak the word – the centurion’s world is defined by the chain of command, and he imagines divine authority to be organized in similar fashion, with Jesus as a commanding officer who speaks and makes things happen. Only speak the word – Jesus is astounded to encounter such faith in a gentile.

We have a tendency to perceive the world in simple dualities like Jew and gentile, neighbor and enemy, believer and non-believer, documented and undocumented, red and blue – but these categories we use to define ourselves and others become much less rigid and they begin to lose their defining power in the presence of love and suffering. The story of the centurion shows us the possibility and the reality of looking beyond the simple dualities: This Gentile has built a synagogue for the Jews, and the comfortable construct of gentiles as hopeless idolaters begins to crumble. These Jewish elders speak well of a Roman officer and they speak kindly to Jesus, and the comfortable constructs of Roman oppressors and Jewish opponents begin to crumble. This soldier of the empire is caring and kind, and our comfortable assumption that systems of domination leave no room for such gifts begins to crumble. Love and suffering can soften our rigid constructions of reality and make room for healing, and I mean healing in the full sense of the word, the restoring of conditions in which life flourishes.

“Only speak the word, and let my servant be healed,” the centurion asked Jesus via his friends who served as intermediaries. Jesus didn’t go to the centurion’s house. For all we know the two never met in person. Jesus didn’t meet the servant, either, let alone talk to him or touch him. The friends returned to the house and found the slave in good health. Apparently Jesus did speak the word, but Luke doesn’t tell us what he said or when he said it. I wonder if this is Luke’s way of saying that it isn’t a particular word or command that brings healing to our broken lives; that it is rather Jesus’ presence with us and our encounter with him in faith that makes our lives whole. In Jesus’ own love and suffering we recognize the boundless love and compassion of God. His whole life is the word that continues to speak healing into the world.

Adopted

I read about a baby box a couple of weeks ago. A baby box, I wondered, what’s that? I’ve seen babies sleeping in laundry baskets and drawers, so my mind immediately went to images of boxes with babies in them, wooden boxes in which babies could sleep for a few weeks before graduating to the crib, and then the box would perhaps hold little treasures like the favorite stuffed animal or books with bed time stories or the parents’ growing collection of memorabilia like baby’s first photo, first hat, first pair of shoes, first drawing. Yes, that’s got to be it, I told myself. It’s a box for the treasured things we keep from a child’s first days and months of life; it’s a box we don’t take out of the closet very often, but when we do, perhaps on a birthday or one night around graduation time, we love how every small thing in the baby box is a play button for memories and stories.

The story I read, though, was about a different kind of baby box. On a Tuesday in April, they had a dedication ceremony at the Volunteer Fire Department in Woodburn, a small town in northeastern Indiana, near the Ohio state line. They dedicated Indiana’s first baby box. The Safe Haven Baby Box is a padded, climate-controlled container where moms and dads can drop off unwanted newborns anonymously. The box is installed on an exterior wall of the fire station, and is equipped with a security system that notifies emergency personnel when a baby is dropped off; they can get to the child within minutes. A second baby box was dedicated only days later in Michigan City, Indiana. The Knights of Columbus of Indiana will pay for the first 100 baby boxes, which cost $1,500 to $2,000 each, said Monica Kelsey, a volunteer with the fire department who has been advocating for baby boxes in Indiana for several years. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have safe haven laws, which allow unharmed newborns to be surrendered without fear of prosecution. Indiana’s law already allows mothers to drop off newborns at police stations, fire stations and hospitals. But Kelsey pointed out that some people want total anonymity. She spoke of a girl who called a hotline who wanted to know where a baby box was. The young mother refused to go to a hospital or fire station to drop off the baby, but eventually, thankfully, her boyfriend brought the baby to a hospital. Giving up a child is never an easy decision, and fear and shame make things even more complicated. Kelsey said, “This is not criminal; this is legal. We don’t want to push women away.” The Woodburn baby box, the first in Indiana, was installed April 19, the anniversary of when Kelsey says her birth mother abandoned her at a hospital when she was just hours old.

Baby boxes have been around in one form or another for centuries, and the earliest known examples were foundling wheels installed in the outside walls of churches and convents in medieval times. But the practice of taking in abandoned children goes back to the earliest days of the church. It was not uncommon in the ancient Roman world for parents to abandon unwanted children or sell them into slavery. Such desperate practices persist today in many parts of the world, where families crushed by poverty abandon infants and children of all ages, or sell them, knowingly or unknowingly, into the slavery of child labor or child prostitution. It appears that the first Christians made creative use of Roman adoption laws.

Rome’s leading families used adoption, much like they used marriage, to strengthen ties among the powerful elite. Families without a male heir routinely adopted boys or even grown men to make sure there wouldn’t be any fights over who would inherit the family wealth after the death of the pater familias, the father of the family. It was an honor (and in some cases the accomplishment of an ambitious young man) to be adopted by a powerful father.

Christians, however, began adopting boys and girls rather indiscriminately; they took in abandoned infants and raised them as their own. This was astonishing, because they didn’t do it to preserve family wealth, but for the children’s sake. They had heard the good news of Jesus Christ and they began to live it. They began to look at every human being, no matter their age, sex, or status, as a person destined to inherit the kingdom and the glory of God as brothers and sisters of Christ. They began to look not just at each other, but at every person, every stranger, every street urchin, every foundling as a beloved child of God for whom Christ had died.

Paul used adoption language to write about the relationship human beings have with God through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We did not receive a spirit that leads us back into fear, we read, back into uncertainty about our status with God, back into oppression or dependency, back into abuse or abandonment or hopelessness – we did not receive a spirit of slavery, Paul writes, but a spirit of adoption, or, more literally translated, a spirit of sonship.
Some of us cringe at those words. Yes, there are deep seated patriarchal assumptions at play in this language, assumptions that still trip us up when we speak of God as Father and Jesus as the Son as though the Gospel were giving religious legitimacy to patriarchal relations of domination and violence in families and communities.

All who are led by the Spirit of God, writes Paul, are sons of God. All have received the spirit of sonship. But Paul is not talking about sex or gender, he is talking about status. Paul uses the language of patriarchal order where the pater familias, the father of the family, holds all power; and he uses the language to undermine the patriarchal order. It’s a dangerous game and we must listen and read carefully not to hear him provide religious justification for male privilege.
All who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. All have received the spirit of sonship. The point is that sons inherit, or more specifically, the firstborn son inherits. Only this firstborn, crucified as a criminal and risen into glory, doesn’t enter into glory to claim his inheritance and leave us behind – no, he pours the love of God into our hearts, the spirit of sonship who through us addresses God as Abba in the intimate, familial language Jesus used.

To receive the Spirit is to enter into the intimate relationship Jesus has with God and to be assured that we are all children of God. And now Paul doesn’t use the gender exclusive word sons, but children. We are children of God, he writes, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The old order is being dismantled because this firstborn lived and died and was raised from the dead so that all children of God would inherit the kingdom and the glory. The spirit of sonship is not the spirit of Rome’s patriarchal order firmly established in law and culture, but a spirit of liberation that frees human beings from anything that would keep us from living in the freedom and glory of the children of God. It is the Spirit who inspired Christians throughout the Roman empire to adopt abandoned children or pay the debts of others to free them from prison or the galley. It is the same Spirit who inspires Christians today to fight against human trafficking or payday lending and motivates us to treat every person as a beloved child of God.

When the outpouring of the Holy Spirit began on Pentecost, people asked, “What does this mean?” And Peter said, “This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel, ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.’”

God is pouring out the Spirit on all flesh – male and female, young and old, even on slaves, the most oppressed who have no say – and by the Spirit they are empowered and given voice to speak divine truth. Every child of God is given authority through the Spirit to contribute prophetic teaching.

We have never fully grasped what a revolutionary moment and statement Pentecost is. Every voice matters, because the Spirit doesn’t follow our carefully constructed power arrangements, but inspires visions, dreams, and prophetic speech particularly among those we consider too old or too young or of the wrong sex or gender or class background. So the Spirit not only inspires us to speak the truth we find in our intimate relationship with God, but to listen for it in the words and the silence of all whom God has chosen to inherit the glory into which Christ has entered.

A mother placing her newborn child in a baby box is an act of despair, a silent cry for the life where we don’t abandon but embrace each other. But it is also an act of love and faith. She trusts that there is in the world a community that welcomes her child as a child of God. Perhaps there’s even a part of her hoping that she herself would not be abandoned but embraced as a child of God. I pray we are part of that community.

Becoming real human beings

I’ll call my mother later today. I’ll wish her a happy mother’s day and tell her I love her, and she’ll ask me how Nancy and the kids are doing, and how are things at church, and then she’ll ask me what on earth is going on in this country and I’ll tell her I don’t know.

That’s been a pattern lately in conversations, not just with my mom. Sooner or later we talk about the decline of our politics to the lowest levels of so-called reality tv. It’s hard for comedians to find anything outrageous to say when legislators and candidates, the very people they want to mock, keep blurring the line between satire and reality with their bills and tweets.

David Gushee is an ordained Baptist minister and a professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer. “This election year has been revelatory in many ways,” he wrote in a recent column for Religion News Service.

One thing that has been revealed is the weakness of many of our most central institutions, together with an associated loss of confidence in these institutions on the part of tens of millions of Americans. In other words, many of us used to have confidence that grown-ups were in charge and ultimately all would be well. Now we are not at all sure.

Much of Gushee’s column resembles the rant of agrumpy old man and he’s not that old, but it appears he just needed to get some things off his chest about our politics, the economy, our churches, our families, and our television news.

You know, there were those sober-minded TV anchors like Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite, who cast their eyes over the day’s news and offered fair-minded description and occasional wise commentary for the Great American Middle. But now there’s not News, there’s Left News and Right News. And there’s not Walter Cronkite, but instead gorgeous young graduates of model school who look very little like Walter Cronkite. It’s the blonde leading the blind.

I wanted to tell him about Gwen Ifill when I first read that, but he knows he’s exaggerating. The point of his rant is that “our major cultural institutions are indeed weaker than they were. [And] our disastrous politics this election year both reflects this reality and, sadly, appears to be advancing it.”

I have prepared this sermon with two promises echoing in my head. One from last Sunday’s gospel passage from John, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:23). The other promise was made by some commentator on the radio who predicted that this year’s presidential campaign would be the ugliest on record.

I have been hearing calls from party leaders, more desperate sounding on the Republican side, for the rank and file to unite behind the presumptive candidates. And I have listened to Jesus praying for his disciples “that they may all be one” (John 17:21).

In our politics, unity is ultimately about our confidence that the Constitution and other institutions of government will have the capacity to contain our differences of interest and perspective and that they will allow us to find viable solutions to the many problems facing our nation and the world.

But Jesus isn’t calling for his followers to unite behind him. He prays for us. He prays for all who have come to see in him what human beings are created to be. He prays for all who have come to see in him the ultimate revelation of who God is. He prays that we may be one as God is one.
The prayer is the final scene of his farewell meal with his disciples. He has been at table with them. He has washed their feet. He has instructed and taught them. And now he doesn’t call them to unite behind Peter or another of the disciples. And he doesn’t call them to unite on a platform of shared values and objectives. He stops addressing them and begins to pray.

The final words are words of prayer, and we have the privilege of overhearing what he says. We are given a glimpse of the intimacy of the divine life where each person is who they are only in relation to the other two. “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,” Jesus prays, “may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” He prays for us to be drawn into the communal life of God and to find the consummation of all things in the unity of the one who made us, the one who became incarnate to redeem us, and the one who has been sent to be with us forever. He prays for us to be drawn into the communion of love that is God and he doesn’t just make it so, because there is nothing coercive about this love. He loves us and the commandment he has given us is new not in commanding us to love one another, but to love one another as he has loved us. This means that the center of the circle of love as well as the radius that determines its reach have been established by Christ, and there is nothing exclusive about this love.

He prays that the world may believe that he is the one who was sent because God so loves the world. He prays that the world, i.e. all in creation that is opposed to God’s vision of life, will believe and let itself be drawn into the consummation of all things in the communion of love that is God.

Why does he pray so we can overhear his prayer? God has entrusted us, fragile and prone to failure as we are, with making the love of God visible and tangible in the world. Jesus wants us to know that we are not alone in our struggles to live faithfully in this love; he is praying for us, and I take that as an invitation that we join him in praying for the world God loves.

Some of you will know that Fr. Daniel Berrigan died last Saturday at age 94. He once wrote, “One cannot level one’s moral lance at every evil in the universe. There are just too many of them. But you can do something, and the difference between doing something and doing nothing is everything.” He was determined to do something; he was passionate in his opposition to the Vietnam war and to nuclear weapons. His actions were often controversial, but he also inspired many to dedicate their lives to doing something rather than nothing, because all his actions were deeply rooted in God’s love. I read a piece about him by Omid Safi, titled, The Saint I Never Met: Daniel Berrigan. The article complements the column by David Gushee I mentioned earlier; it reflects a similar concern for the decline of some of our institutions, but it is very different in tone; and that’s not all. Safi is an Islamic scholar, so you’re about to hear some of what a Muslim wrote about a Jesuit priest, and you’ll hear it in the context of a Baptist professor’s rant about the decline of major cultural institutions, and you’ll hear all of that – I hope you’ll hear all of that – in the context of Jesus’ prayer for us and for the world.

Safi notes that the actor Martin Sheen once said in an interview that it was Father Berrigan who “kept him” in Catholicism during a time when he was ready to walk away from it. “I look around,” writes Safi, “and I see so many people, so many institutions that drive and have driven so many people away from faith. I see the ‘spiritual but not religious’ crowd searching for all that is sacred and holy and sensual and beautiful, but having been driven away — from institutions, from communities, from rituals, from traditions.”

He continues, “I wonder who today keeps people in traditions, in communities, in rituals, in institutions. I wonder about my own community. I ponder whose voice, whose breath, whose life, whose compassion, whose touch, and whose service keeps people in, keeps people nourished and sustained.”

And then he says, “I miss you, Daniel Berrigan, never having met you.”

Here, ultimately, is what I realize about why I, too, shed a tear at the passing of Father Daniel Berrigan. It is not so much that I wept for him. He was blessed in this world, and I suspect he is blessed now. He didn’t have to wait to meet God in the Hereafter. He was already in that presence here and now.
No, I weep for me. I weep for us. No, I weep for him because I yearn for the presence, the touch, the glance, the teaching of people like him, people who keep us in traditions. I worry that without them, we lose our connection to all that is lovely and beautiful. I weep for us, worrying that we have not yet become true human beings.

Safi tells the story, from a poem by Rumi, of the sage who wandered around the city in broad daylight holding a lit torch. People asked him what he was doing; they thought he was crazy. He told them he was sick and tired of two-legged beasts and demons, and that he was searching for one real human being.

They answered, “Aaah, a human. There’s not one of those to be found.”

The sage responded, “That one, that very one who is not to be found, that is what I am looking to find.”

Safi ends his column with a prayer. “May God make of us real human beings,” is the closing line.

Father Berrigan loved to ask people, “What gives you hope?” In this time of division and bafflement, what would you tell him?

The God who raised Jesus from the dead gives me hope, I would tell him. The God who makes of us real human beings in the company of Jesus, the real human being. The God who loves the world gives me hope.

Sing along

It was in the evening of their last day together when Jesus said to the disciples, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer.” He knew he was facing betrayal, arrest, and death, but he was completely at peace; and not just that, his greatest concern was for his friends.

“Little children, I am with you only a little longer.” I imagine each of them instantly felt their stomachs tensing up. “Lord, where are you going?” Peter asked. Little children the Lord had called them, and that’s how they must have felt. “Why can’t we come with you?” the little ones ask and, “When will you be back? What are we supposed to do without you? Why don’t you stay?”

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus told them. “I go to prepare a place for you, so that where I am you may be also.” And he went on like this for four long chapters, telling his disciples everything they needed to know before he left them. “I will not leave you orphaned,” he promised. But he also told us that we would be the responsible ones now, that he trusted us to carry on in his name. And it did occur to him that the little children, as he lovingly called us, were not at all excited about the prospect of having the entire house to ourselves with no one around to tell us what to do. He knew that there would be times when we would not feel quite grown-up enough for the responsibility we were given, when we would feel abandoned, desolate, vulnerable, frightened—in a word, orphaned. He knew that there would be moments when our hearts would be troubled and we would worry about what would become of us and the church and the world. He knew of those moments when the darkness creeps in and we’re frightened and our little brothers and sisters look to us for a story to comfort them or a brave song that will keep the monsters from coming through the closet door.

When I was little, I used to sing all the way down to the basement where my Mom had sent me to go fetch something for her - and I ran up the stairs on my way back. And it wasn’t youthful exuberance or excess energy that made me leap up those stairs – I couldn’t get away fast enough from the darkness at the bottom of the steps. Things were much more difficult for Caroline, a colleague of mine. She was the bravest little girl when she started school, but when she was eight or nine years old, the darkness began to frighten her. She had a very active imagination that kicked in at night time. She would lay in her bed and imagine all kinds of scary things that might happen after dark. There were the strange shadows cast on the bedroom ceiling and walls by creepy creatures lurking outside her window. There were the monsters in the closet and under the bed, monsters she couldn’t see, but she could feel them just like the dangerous intruders that were hiding behind the curtain. She had a hard time going to sleep because the only way she knew how to guard against the scary unknown was to sit up all night and keep a lookout. Eventually, her mother would come sit with her until she could fall asleep. Over time, she became less afraid of going to sleep at night, but only if her mom was in the room with her.[1]

You have your own memories of moments like that when you were little, or when your own children created night time rituals that helped them feel safe.

“Please leave the door open.”

“Can you and dad talk so I can hear you?”

“Don’t turn off the light in the hallway.”

“Just hold my hand.”

And it’s not just when we’re little; it’s anytime the unknown threatens to overwhelm us. It takes a lifetime of practice to let evening come as described by Jane Kenyon in her poem of that title.

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing  
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned  
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den. 
Let the wind die down. Let the shed  
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop  
in the oats, to air in the lung  
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t  
be afraid. God does not leave us  
comfortless, so let evening come.[2]

The setting sun, the moon and stars, the world outside, the house, and finally as close as the air in the lung. Let evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid.

Jane Kenyon died of leukemia when she was only 47. Her words echo the gospel. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. Let evening come. Do not let your hearts be troubled. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. Let evening come. I will not leave you comfortless, so let evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. It takes a lifetime of practice to let evening come, as it will.

Abide with me, we sing.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.[3]

I don’t remember what came first, the song or the deep trust in the love that holds us and all things; the two go hand in hand. We sing against the fear, and we let evening come, as it will, and we lean into the promise. On the border where life’s little day turns into night we learn to let go, ready to receive the new life of a day without end. The darkness of the unknown is illumined by the promise that we will not be orphaned.

Jesus spoke very kindly with his friends on the eve of his betrayal and arrest. He assured them, he assured us that his presence with us would not end but change. He wasn’t going away, but rather ahead of us. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he said. “Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” Jesus is going ahead of us to make tomorrow a homecoming. He is going ahead of us, and we can continue to follow him by loving one another as he has loved us. We can continue to follow him because he is present with us in a new way: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.” The Spirit of comfort and courage has been sent among us so we don’t worry about the darkness but live to witness to the light that shines in it. The Holy Spirit has been given to us and so we’re the responsible ones now, the ones Christ has trusted to carry on in his name and embody his love in the world.

He has every confidence we can do it. But that doesn’t mean we wont’ fret about it. There’s so much to do, and we already have so many things to do, and how much more can we do, and do we really have all it takes to do all that? We are quick to think about doing, because we’re used to doing, and we miss that Christ doesn’t just send us to work. Christ calls us to live more fully in the peace he gives. Christ draws us into the eternal life of the triune God so that who we are and become is shaped by the divine communion of life. Christ wants us to know that we are God’s beloved whom God will never abandon. The more deeply we know that, the more fully we live in that love and embody it together.

Jesus told his first disciples that he wasn’t going away, but rather ahead of them, ahead of us to prepare a place for all of us. And then he told us that we also are preparing a place. “Those who love me will keep my word,” he said, “and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” Living in the peace of Christ and loving fearlessly, the community of disciples becomes a dwelling place for God in the world, a living temple of the living God.

We have a deep and often painful desire to be fully at home in our lives and Jesus tells us that our desire is a reflection of God’s desire to be at home with us. We whisper and sing “Abide with me” because we feel small and helpless, because our hearts are troubled, because we are afraid of facing the unknown by ourselves, and because letting go doesn’t come easy at all. God also sings “Abide with me,” only the words are different; it is the song of creation and redemption; it is the song of life’s fulfillment in the communion of Creator and creation. It is the song of love that will not let us go. Let’s learn to sing along.

[1] Caroline M. Kelly, “I Am Still With You,” Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2002, p.39-41

[2] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175711

[3] Henry Francis Lyte http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Abide_with_Me

Jewelry for the bride

Rabbi Mendel wanted to know what heaven and hell were like. The prophet Elijah came to him, the story goes, and took the rabbi to show him. Elijah led him into a large room where a big fire was burning and where there was a large table with a huge pot of steaming stew on it. People were sitting around the table with spoons that were longer than their arms, and because they could not eat with these spoons, they sat around the table and starved. Rabbi Mendel found this room and what he saw there so terrifying that he quickly ran outside. Then Elijah took Rabbi Mendel into another large room where a big fire was burning and where there was a large table with a huge pot of steaming stew on it. Around this table sat people with spoons that were longer than their arms, but no one starved there; they were feeding each other.[1]

I have long loved this story for its simplicity and wisdom. There’s a big, welcoming fire, a table with room for all, and plenty of food. The only difference between the two scenes, and what a vast difference it is, is whether or not we realize that all thrive and flourish once we begin to see and respond to each other’s needs. Hell is the insatiable desire to take what I need from the pot; hell is solitary starvation. Heaven is receiving the gift of life and sharing it; heaven is communion.

John the Seer of Patmos wrote a letter to seven churches in seven cities in the Roman province of Asia, in what is today Turkey. His letter was included in Scripture as the book of Revelation. John was not a man of few words when it came to describing what is ultimately real in life. He left the pithy tale of spoons too long to feed ourselves for others to tell, in less troubling times; in his own day the air was too thick with fear and foreboding and the threat of persecution, and so he reached deep into the rich treasury of the biblical prophets for his images and he made full use of the whole palette of Jewish apocalyptic tradition to add color to his grand portrayal of what is ultimately real in life.

I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

It doesn’t get any grander than this. The center aisle stretches from heaven to earth and here comes the bride, the new Jerusalem – this is what is ultimately real in life: the faithfulness of God; the covenant God has made with humanity; the holy city where God is at home among humans.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.

What has passed away, is the world oppressed by sin and death. What abides is joy; what abides is life that is nothing but life. The consummation of creation and the fulfillment of God’s every promise is the city where God and the peoples of the earth are at home.

Perhaps you are surprised that John’s last vision of ultimate destiny for humanity is not some idyllic paradise garden but a city. Perhaps you are surprised that at the end of our long exile east of Eden humanity doesn’t go back to the garden but through the gates of the new Jerusalem. To me this suggests that God doesn’t replace human civilization and its complexities of social, economic, and political life, but redeem our efforts to live in community.

For many of us, the big story of this past week was the death of Prince, but I want to tell a much humbler tale. I want to tell it and lift it up for God’s redeeming grace to touch it, or rather touch us and our efforts to live in community.

On Thursday morning, work crews from Metro Parks arrived at Fort Negley Park and began clearing out the abandoned portions of homeless encampments, leaving alone the portions still occupied. Some of the campers hadn’t left after a deadline set by Metro for the encampment to disband last Friday. It’s a very difficult situation for the workers, the campers, and the people trying to find housing or shelter space for them. “I wish they would leave this open,” said 22-year-old Nora Braud, who camps at the site with her father and husband. “We go to work. We come back. We go to bed. We don’t bother nobody.” But Metro wants to go ahead and build new trails and an outdoor classroom for the Adventure Science Center after having delayed action for months.

It’s a very difficult situation. More than 2,200 people live on the streets in Nashville. 24 percent of homeowners and 46 percent of renters in our city pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing and are considered cost burdened; they are much more likely to have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care. A family with one full-time worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford the local fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States. In the past six years, Nashville’s population has grown by almost 7 percent.[2] Housing prices are going up and the wages of the working poor are not. 14,000 individuals and families in Nashville are on the waiting list for Section 8 housing. Samuel Lester is a street outreach worker with Open Table Nashville. Witnessing the events at the camp on Thursday morning he told the Tennessean,

It’s heartbreaking to hear their stories and see the trauma they’ve been through and then see the destruction of the little sanity they’ve found. We want to see them in housing. Compared to living on the street they have a little community here, shelter ... people to watch their things. We know where to find them. But once they are dispersed it’s very difficult to get in touch with them.[3]

I’m not telling this story and sharing these numbers to assign blame or to shame those of us who have plenty of room in our house for a homeless couple and their cat. I’m telling this story because many forces are shaping our life in this community, powerful forces that can make our acts of compassion seem so insignificant; we want to build a city where the poor aren’t constantly pushed to the margins and out of sight, but our efforts seem so small compared to everything else that’s going on. I want us to remember that heartbreaking as this story is, it also points to what is ultimately real; in Samuel’s words, “They have a little community here, shelter ... people to watch their things. We know where to find them.” Small efforts to build community and help each other out often are disrupted by other forces, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. We know that it matters a lot when we dip our spoon in the huge pot of steaming stew and reach across the table.

The Lord says in John’s vision, “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.” This is not a new thing the Lord is about to do. This is who God is and always has been and forever will be. The Giver of the water of life. Life is God’s love overflowing into creation and filling our hearts to draw us into communion with God. All our giving happens in response to God’s unceasing gift. Every small effort to build community with love. Every dollar given to provide food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, and good water for all. Every hour given to strengthen the fellowship of believers where God’s vision of life is received, explored and embodied.

John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. In chapter 19, the bride is described as “clothed with fine linen, bright and pure” and John adds, “the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints” (Rev 19:8). The holy city is God’s gift, he tells us, but part of its beauty are the acts of compassion we have offered in our lifetime, part of its splendor are our steps toward neighborly justice. None of that is ever wasted; it becomes part of the city architecture; it becomes jewelry for the bride. And if the city of the redeemed is the world’s ultimate destiny, then every thought, move or deed in some other direction, no matter how disruptive and powerful it may appear, is out of step with reality and finally wasted. What abides is the city that reflects the love of God in glorious splendor.

[1] See Dorothee Soelle, The Strength of the Weak: Toward a Christian Feminist Identity (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1984), 159-160; modified.

[2] http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/barry-pledges-10-million-for-affordable-housing-but-it-wont-help-those-currently-homeless/Content?oid=6576041

[3]http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/davidson%20/2016/04/21/metro-begins-clearing-fort-negley-homeless-camp/83328314/

Singing on the way to the city

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” They were shouting in loud voice, perhaps singing, all of them together, a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, along with angels and elders and four mysterious creatures. “Amen!” they sang, “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

According to the book of Revelation, the risen Christ appeared to a man named John on the island of Patmos, just off the coast of Turkey, and gave him messages to be sent to the seven churches in the Roman province of Asia, the part of the world we know today as Turkey. John was then caught up into the heavenly throneroom, where he saw Christ open a book with seven seals. In John’s letter, the seventh seal opens into seven trumpet scenes, and the last trumpet announces seven bowls of the wrath of God. John beholds the plagues and devastations that result from the seals, trumpets, and bowls, climaxing in the destruction of Babylon, the “great city.” Then come the visions of the final triumph of God as Christ returns: the dead are raised, the final judgment is held, and the new Jerusalem is established as the capital of the redeemed creation. The big question running through all the scenes is, will the Christians who hear John’s witness orient themselves to the “great city” that is already fallen, the “great city” of Babylon, or will they orient themselves to the “holy city” where God is at home along with humanity, the new Jerusalem that in John’s vision is already descending from heaven?

The book is meant to be read in its entirety in worship, perhaps with the listening congregation singing along with the many doxologies and anthems woven like threads of gold through the text, joining the worship of the saints on earth with that of the saints and angels in heaven. The whole thing feels like a script for a performance, and it’s no coincidence that the symbolic world of Revelation has inspired poets, musicians, painters, and even architects. However, the same symbols have also “nurtured delusionary systems, both private and public, to the destruction of their fashioners and to the discredit of the writing (…) Few writings in all of literature have been so obsessively read with such generally disastrous results as the Book of Revelation,” says L. T. Johnson, who teaches New Testament at Emory University. “Its history of interpretation is largely a story of tragic misinterpretation.”[1] Revelation was written to fledgling churches during a period of oppression and persecution. It was written to strengthen their faith in the power of the Lamb during a time when the power of Rome was claiming their allegiance in ways that made it difficult for them to hold on to their confession of Christ as Lord. It was written as a letter of encouragement, urging them to trust in God as the worlds of the Roman empire and of God’s reign were clashing around them and within. The letter’s first audiences still knew how to read it, they were immersed in the language and promise of the Hebrew prophets, they were familiar with John’s symbols and the letter’s countless allusions to other parts of Scripture. But it didn’t take long before the book began to be read as “something akin to a train schedule” for the final years of the world. Rather than a source of hope, the text soon became an instrument of fear and abuse in the hands of those who claimed to know the true, but hidden, meaning of its bold declarations.

Martin Luther did include Revelation in his translation of the New Testament, but he didn’t like it much. “My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it.”[2] John Calvin apparently agreed; he wrote commentaries on every book of the New Testament, except the one printed on its closing pages. Chances are that already among its first audiences in the seven churches to which it was originally addressed not everyone accepted it as authentic Christian teaching. To this day, Catholic and Protestant lectionaries have only minimal readings from Revelation.[3]

The book contains plenty of material that is difficult to integrate into faith in the Jesus who taught and lived love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. In scene after scene, God, the heavenly armies, or Christ are presented as violent perpetrators. There’s no turning the other cheek, no prayer for those who persecute, no love of enemies. Eugene Boring writes, “The reservations of some have been based on the real dangers that have emerged when Revelation has been interpreted in foolish, sub-Christian or anti-Christian ways. Although every biblical book is subject to misinterpretation, no other part of the Bible has provided such a happy hunting ground for all sorts of bizarre and dangerous interpretations.”[4]

The way to read Revelation faithfully, I believe, is to keep our eyes on the throne that stands at the center of the heavenly worship John was privileged to see and hear. “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” We read the book through the lens of the lamb who was led to the slaughter. Amid the scenes of unimaginable destruction and cosmic upheaval John lets us see the heavenly throne where God is seated together with the crucified Messiah whom God raised from the dead. Amid the chaos of every fear and terror imaginable, we get to look into the very heart of the universe, and we see Jesus.

When German voters put Hitler and the Nazis in power, the churches were unbearably slow to respond and failed almost completely to resist. Protestant churches in particular were paralyzed not only by the pervasive fear but by generations of teaching that, according to Romans 13, “there is no authority except from God (...) [and] whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed.”[5]Only a handful of Christians pointed to Revelation 13, where the state is pictured as a beast emerging from the sea, uttering blasphemies against God and persecuting God’s people. Only a handful of Christians had the courage to call Berlin Babylon, the great city, already fallen; only a handful had the courage to orient their lives to the holy city, the new Jerusalem, already descending from heaven. Only a handful kept the faith and stood up against the Nazi ideology and the crimes of their government.

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

In South Africa, when the ungodly apartheid system seemed firmly established, Bishop Desmond Tutu was among those who remained faithful. He saw clearly that much of Johannesburg was in truth Babylon, and he knew that from the perspective of Easter, Babylon the great had already fallen. Bishop Tuto got used to having members of the Secret Police in the pews on Sunday; he could identify them easily since they were the only ones taking notes during his sermons. One Sunday morning, he looked two of them in the eyes and said, “I know who you are; I know why you are here; you have already lost, so why don’t you join us?”

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

The violence of apartheid was real and painful, but it couldn’t last. The Nazi terror was real and painful, but it couldn’t last. The horror of slavery was real and painful, but it couldn’t last. The murderous regime of ISIS or the imperial dreams of any person, ideology, group or nation may assert themselves with great and terrifying power, but they will not last: They have already been conquered by the Lamb. They have already been conquered by the faith of Christ. They have already been conquered by compassion and forgiveness, by the love that embraces the enemy and prays for those who persecute. They have already been conquered by the men and women who walk in the way of Christ toward the city of God.

John saw a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands, and singing. John saw humanity coming together not by imperial order or by Führerbefehl but by the pull of the love embodied in Jesus. He heard one of the elders say, “The Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

There is much in the book of Revelation that worries me. Too much room is given to what I can only interpret as vengeful fantasies, but I trust that even these dark and violent visions will be transformed when those who harbor them bring them to God and to the Lamb in prayer. I trust that the Lamb at the center of the throne will shepherd and guide us to life that is nothing but life. That is why I sing to God and to the Lamb in response to the wondrous love they share with each other and with all.

We think and talk and write about stewardship this month, and I will say some more next Sunday when we conclude our annual stewardship campaign. Today I just want to highlight one thing: Stewardship is primarily about what we do with our life; how we make our whole life a gift in response to God’s love outpoured. Dag Hammarskjöld wrote about “finding something to live for, great enough to die for.” For John, the Seer of Patmos, as well as for men and women persecuted and murdered for their faith in German death camps, and in our own time in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Nigeria and Bangladesh, for all these witnesses that something was the kingdom of God.

They are singing, robed in white, palm branches in their hands, and I borrow words of St. Augustine who invites us to sing with them,

O the happiness of the heavenly alleluia, sung in security, in fear of no adversity! We shall have no enemies in heaven, we shall never lose a friend. God’s praises are sung both there and here, but here they are sung in anxiety, there, in security; here they are sung by those destined to die, there, by those destined to live for ever; here they are sung in hope, there, in hope’s fulfillment; here they are sung by wayfarers, there, by those living in their own country. So let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labors. You should sing as wayfarers do—sing, but continue your journey. Do not be lazy, but sing to make your journey more enjoyable. Sing, but keep going.[6]

---

[1]Johnson, L. T., The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Rev. ed.), (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,1999), 573.

[2] Martin Luther, Preface to the Revelation of St. John [1], 1522, Luther’s Works, vol. 35 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960), 398-99.

[3] Eugene Boring, Revelation (Interpretation), (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1989), 3.

[4] Ibid., 4.

[5] Romans 13:1-2.

[6] Augustine of Hippo, quoted in Gabe Huck, A Sourcebook about Liturgy (Chicago: LTP, 1994), 35.

Coming to know the Risen One

The high priest slept well that Friday night. The streets and squares of Jerusalem were quiet again after the daily disruptions this Jesus had brought to the city and the temple. Now he was dead and buried. Friday was what the high priest would have called a peaceful night and he slept well again on Saturday. The Romans had taken care of Jesus, and hopefully his followers had gotten the message and were on their way back to Galilee. The unrest this man had created in the city – it could have become a major crisis, especially during the holidays. Any kind of disturbance bothered Rome – but now things were under control. The high priest was proud of himself – he had nipped the problem in the bud. He was done with Jesus, done with civil unrest and excited crowds; Jerusalem was quiet again. The holy temple would once again be a place for orderly worship, with wise leaders in place to protect and preserve the sacred tradition. The high priest slept well – until Sunday.

On the first day of the week the first reports of rumors began to trickle in, disturbing rumors. A handful of men and women, followers, no doubt, of this Jesus, were making claims that they had seen Jesus, that he was alive because God had raised him from the dead. Very soon, he heard reports that Peter and John were in the temple just about every day, teaching and healing, and attracting large crowds. People came not just from the city but even from the surrounding towns, bringing the sick and those tormented by demons, and the buzz was the followers of Jesus were healing them. “Hello, insomnia,” the high-priest sighed, “Rome will not be pleased.”

In the book of Acts, Luke paints a portrait of the church as a movement of fearless witnesses whose presence and work bring wholeness and hope to the city; but what is exciting news to some, is disruptive and disturbing to others. No wonder, the high priest was nervous; institutions and the people they empower want stability more than anything, which means that any change must occur only on their terms and under their control. The followers of Jesus didn’t meet those requirements; like their master, they acted with a different kind of authority. Soon the chief priests, elders, and scribes – the entire temple leadership – assembled to discuss the matter: “What will we do with them?” They called in Peter and John, ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus, and released them. Peter and John in turn met with the other disciples and talked about what had happened at the council meeting. They prayed, “Lord, look at their threats, and grant your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” They prayed for courage to speak and act in the name of Jesus, and their prayers were answered. Their boldness gave the high priest a headache, and after yet another sleepless night he took action. This Jesus thing had to stop, whatever the cost. And so he had the apostles arrested and shut up in prison. He slept a little better that night. But while he was dreaming of taking back control of the temple and the city, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, and the apostles walked out. Before the sun was up, the good news of Jesus’ resurrection was again being proclaimed in the temple and in the streets of Jerusalem.

Again the high priest had the apostles brought in and stand before the council for questioning. “We gave you strict orders, didn’t we, not to teach in this name. Why have you defied the express directive of this council to desist this preaching?” Peter and the apostles answered with disarming simplicity, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”

It was human authority that killed Jesus to silence him. It was human authority that resisted his authority to teach and forgive. It was human authority that accused him and found him guilty, convicted and executed him. It was human authority that did all it could to put an end to Jesus. But God raised him up. God exalted him that he might continue to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things. You want to forbid us to witness? You might as well forbid us to breathe, or tell the wind to cease to blow! This is who we are, now that Jesus is risen from the dead, and this is what we do. His life is our life.

Who would have thought that one day Peter would speak like that? Who would have thought that frightened disciples would have the courage to take a stand like that? Who would have thought that they would look human authority in the eye and defy it with such bold grace? Who would have thought they could be so free?

In the Gospel according to John we see a very different snapshot of the early church. We are looking at a terrified little band, huddled in a dark room with a chair braced against the door. The air is thick with fear, and nobody says anything. Yes, there was the word the women had brought back from the tomb, but what are words against the grip of fear? What are words against the reasonable expectation that they, the followers of Jesus of Nazareth would be next in line to be convicted and executed by the city’s religious and civil authorities? The first day of the new creation has dawned with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, but the disciples are still sitting in Friday darkness with little hope and little courage. The gospel makes it very clear: this is a community that will have only one thing going for it – the risen Christ himself.

And then Jesus enters the scene with words of peace, and their fear falls away and joy take its place. This is how the resurrection stops being a word and begins to become the reality in which we dare to live. It’s a glimpse of the living Christ or a whisper. It doesn’t necessarily happen all at once, but sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly, much like love happens. Much like the first disciples encountered the crucified Jesus alive among them and were transformed by his presence and his gifts.

The difference between Peter who denied three times that he knew Jesus and Peter who declared, “We must obey God rather than any human authority,” the difference is Peter’s encounter with the living Christ and his peace, his forgiveness, and his mission. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” the living Christ says to us as he said to the first disciples. And he breathed on them as he breathes on us, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

The difference between a frightened group of men and women hiding behind locked doors and the same men and women fearlessly proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the difference is the Holy Spirit. The difference is our relationship with the Living One, a relationship so intimate that we breathe in what he breathes out.

He made our life his own – the promises we make and break, the ways in which we betray, deny and abandon each other – he made our life his own, so that his life would be ours. His life of obedience and faithfulness is for us and for all, and we begin to live in it. His compassion is for us and for all, and we continue to live in it, resisting the pull of fear. His life is for us and for all of creation, and we share it with all.

This is what we do now that Jesus is risen from the dead and this is who we are. We are his and we live the life he gives. We discover who we are meant to be in our relationship with him. Thomas was not with them that night when Jesus came, John tells us. Thomas missed the whole thing; he was a latecomer like all of us. I don’t know if the Apostle Thomas is the patron saint of all who weren’t there, but I suggest we think of him that way. He takes our place in the story, and perhaps he is named the Twin, because he is our twin; his experience is so much like ours: he wasn’t there, but he wasn’t satisfied with second-hand reports. He needed to see for himself, he needed to get close enough to touch. He didn’t take anyone’s word for what God had done, but waited for God to act and for the Risen One to make himself known to him. And Thomas, the one who didn’t want to settle for repeating the words of others but held out for an experience of the Risen One on his own terms, this Thomas made a confession of faith unlike any other in the gospels when he encountered the living Christ: my Lord and my God.

We are reading the words of witnesses and they themselves tell us to be patient with our questions and our hunger for certainty. Much of the time, our faith will be a mix of belief and disbelief, a back and forth between clarity of vision and stumbling in the dark, moments of speaking with great confidence and moments of knowing deep in our bones things for which we have no words. The witnesses encourage us to be patient with our questions and our hunger for certainty; they encourage us to come and see. They invite us to let ourselves be drawn into the life we can only know by entering it.

Too much to take in

9.9 million viewers watched the premiere of season six, the final season, of Downton Abbey in January. Numbers like that made it the most-watched drama series in the 45-year history of PBS, and a noteworthy TV event that brought together fans of Masterpiece Theatre with a British accent and lovers of soapy stories. In our home, I wasn’t the biggest fan, but I must admit that I’ll miss Lady Violet and her zinging one liners. What was it about this lush period piece that kept so many of us tuning in, every January, for six years? I don’t know, but I think the experience was a very reassuring one for many. We were watching the disintegration of aristocratic British society in the early 20^th century, and we could empathize with the family of Lord and Lady Grantham as well as with the men and women downstairs. We were watching change of global proportions rolling through the little world of the big house, and it all turned out alright in the end. In the final episode we got to see Anna Bates, holding her newborn baby, tucked happily into the luxurious bed of Lady Mary whom she served as lady’s maid. Hard to imagine for poor, old Mr Carson, the butler, but the walls of the house did not collapse and life continued with a new generation who would grow up in this strange new world, and for them it would simply be the world. There are lots of reasons why we’ve been watching this show, but I believe one big reason has been that we ourselves are living through a period of dramatic changes on a global scale, and it’s immensely reassuring to see things turn out alright for Lady Edith and Daisy, and even Mr Barrow. As Lady Violet, the acid-tongued Dowager Countess, declares at the end of Edith’s wedding to Bertie, “There’s a lot at risk, but with any luck, they’ll be happy enough. Which is the English version of a happy ending.”

We love happy endings. Lillian Daniel kept a crumpled up newspaper story with a Vancouver dateline, August 25, 1996; she kept it like a treasure. It told the strange tale of a couple whose airplane crashed in a remote lake, leaving an oil slick and some of the couple’s possessions floating eerily on the water’s surface, their bodies drowned and disappeared. As their obituaries got written and funeral plans were finalized, a coroner was flown out to the crash site days later to write the final report. And there, lo and behold, on the shore a full quarter mile’s swim from where the plane had made its fiery nosedive, there they were, the stranded couple, waving their arms in the vast wilderness, hoping to attract the attention of somebody on that lonely plane flying by overhead. The coroner came to write a death report, and he got to tell a story of life. “Tears turn to laughter as dead couple returns,” reads the headline.

We love happy endings, because they help us not give in to the many unhappy ones. They help us hold on to hope. But I’m not done yet with that little story. When that Vancouver couple returned home after their plane crash and their time in the wilderness, their eight-year-old son, Lewis, greeted them with a cake in the shape of an airplane, and written on it with sweet icing were the words, “Bugsy and Sheila, Welcome Home. You are grounded.” [1]

You know what he meant; he may have picked up some of the pilot lingo or he may have heard those words addressed to himself a few times before. But whether he knew it or not, he also told them a deep truth about this extraordinary moment of escape from death. They were grounded in ways they hadn’t been before the experience. Grounded in gratitude. Grounded in recognizing how beautiful a gift life was. Grounded in embracing what really mattered to them, rather than being distracted by a million things that clamored for their attention. All that used to seem important had slipped to the bottom and suddenly, as though a veil had been pulled away, the ordinariness of daily life revealed life’s glory.

“You are grounded,” Lewis had written on the cake, giving words to their experience of having discovered something real to stand on. I imagine there was a long group hug, and they kissed and they cried and they laughed. They were grounded in the joy of being alive. Grounded in their love for each other. If this were a movie, this is where you’d want to start rolling the closing credits. We love happy endings, because we know that in real life it’s just a matter of time before that grounding in gratitude gets overwhelmed by the craziness of daily demands and weekly schedules.

Why am I telling you all this? We love happy endings so much, we may come to this day with a season finale mindset. But the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is not a happy ending. In Luke, as in all the gospels, the Easter morning scenes come at the end of the story, but the resurrection is no happy end; it is the reason the whole story is being told in the first place. The resurrection is a whole new beginning to the story of life.

The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee watched as he was crucified; they saw where his body was laid. And they sat that long day after Friday, small jars of ointment and bags of fragrant spices in their laps; they just sat waiting. Luke says they rested, but we know it wasn’t a Sabbath of rest for them, let alone a Sabbath of peace. With hearts heavy with grief, they were waiting for the world to turn so they could go to the tomb and anoint the body, so they could do with love and care what had to be done in a hurry before sunset on Friday. At early dawn they came to the tomb and nothing was like it was supposed to be. The stone was rolled away, but when they went in, they did not find the body. This was no remote lake where the deep sometimes does swallow drowned bodies, this was a tomb hewn from rock. Bodies weren’t supposed to disappear.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the two messengers said. “He is not here, but has risen.” The tomb didn’t speak with its wide gaping mouth, its only message was the absence of Jesus’ body. The heavenly messengers did speak, but their words only added new questions to an already profoundly confusing and perplexing situation. And then they said, “Remember how he told you that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” And the women remembered and Jesus’ own words helped them begin to unfold the wondrous thing God had done: The world of sinners had had its way with Jesus, but God raised him from the dead. In response to the world’s loud and violent No, God spoke a vindicating Yes. And in response to the world’s proud and self-assured affirmation of its own way, its own truth, and its own life, God affirmed the way of Jesus as God’s own way. God affirmed the way of compassion and mercy. God didn’t just raise somebody to reveal God’s power to bring life out of death, God raised Jesus who lived to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor to all. And the women found the stone rolled away not because somehow this was necessary in order for Jesus to get out of the tomb; no, the stone was rolled away so they could get in, we could get in, and then come away with a new word from that place where all things come to an end. They came away with the word of life, with the good news of resurrection, the good news of a new creation in Christ, the promise of life redeemed and fulfilled. The stone was rolled away so we would get out of the tomb of our fear and despair and find the living one among the living.

The women remembered Jesus’ words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Their response? The translations vary, just pick one. “These words seemed to them an idle tale, empty talk, a silly story, a foolish yarn, sheer humbug, utter nonsense, and they did not believe them.” Luke Johnson detects “a definite air of male superiority in this response,” and he’s not the only one. But there’s more here than just common sexism. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is a newness so radical, our language fails to capture it. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead will either ground our experience of the world and our knowledge of God, or it will remain a strange word that doesn’t fit any of our categories. The resurrection of Jesus is a reality that is too much for any of us to take in, but it has a way of taking us in.

The gospel reading from Luke for this day ends with a curious verse:

But Peter got up and and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went away, amazed at what had happened.

Now why would he get up and run to the tomb after they had all just dismissed the women’s words as utter nonsense? What was it that made him get up and not walk, but run to the tomb? Put yourself in his shoes for a moment. You’d been with Jesus pretty much from day one. You heard him teach, you watched him eat with sinners and you shared in those meals, you saw him heal and forgive and embrace, and before dawn on Friday you denied three times that you even knew him.

‘Hey, Peter, what made you run to the tomb?’ Here are some answers people have given:

I went because I was curious.

I wondered if the women might be right.

I hoped they might be right.

I wanted to see for myself.

I went because I felt guilty.

I had to apologize.

The Holy Spirit drew me.

I wondered if I was the reason Jesus was alive. ^[2]

The resurrection of Jesus isn’t something we can take in, but it is a reality that takes us in and grounds us completely in the risen life of Christ. We are grounded in grace and forgiveness. With wave after wave of unprecedented change rolling through our world, we are grounded in God’s redemptive purposes for all of creation. With the daily news giving us little to hold on to but our fear or our sarcasm, we are grounded in love that never ends. We are grounded, and we have never been freer to live fearlessly.

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[1] Lillian Daniel, “You are grounded,” Journal for Preachers 27 no 3 Easter 2004, 20-21.

[2] See Anna Carter Florence, Journal for Preachers 27 no 3 Easter, 2004, 35-37.

In the name of Jesus

Palm Sunday is a curious day. We spread palm branches up and down the center aisle, turning the long stretch of carpet into a royal highway, and we sing with joyful exuberance, welcoming the Lord Jesus into the city. Today, the tall double doors of the front entrance are the city gates of Jerusalem, and the table in the great hall awaits the gathering of the guests who are coming from all the ends of the earth for the royal banquet. We sing, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because we do want him here, we do want him to rule and make all things right – but we also remember why we have come to call this particular week, Holy Week; because it’s not all royal welcome and hosanna. Our hopes and the promises of God are being fulfilled in ways no one could have imagined.

We do want Jesus to rule and to make all things right, but we are also beginning to understand that it is not just them who get in the way of Christ’s reign – them being the Jews, or the Romans, or the fickle crowds or whoever else we think we can blame – it is we ourselves who cannot let God’s love rule our lives. Our own visions of a world made right often have more in common with imperial dreams of world domination than with the peculiar way of Christ. We get power wrong, and we half know it, and so we feel a little awkward standing in the gate of the city and watching Jesus riding down Broadway on a donkey. He’s turning our world upside down, and we half know that that is what it takes to make things right, but we only half know it and the other half resists the pull of God’s love. We get power wrong. We see the donkey, but in our imagination it’s still the strong man in shining armor, riding high on a white stallion, who comes to save us. We see Jesus, but we still dream of Superman and Wonder Woman.

There is a city, not far from here, and it could be any city, in any state.[1] In that city, there’s a hospital for men and women who are emotionally wounded and mentally ill. A few years ago, the medical staff and the board of that psychiatric hospital wanted to open halfway houses in the community, so that people who were on their way to full recovery could be supported while making the transition back into life outside. Rather than taking one giant step from the small world of the hospital to the big world of the city, they would be encouraged to take a number of small steps toward greater independence. Well, not everybody in the city was thrilled about the idea, and so there was a contentious city council meeting.

The place was packed. Hundreds of people squeezed into the meeting room, shouting their opposition to the halfway houses, “We don’t want these people in our neighborhood.” After a couple of brief presentations and a lot of yelling the city council said no to the proposal. Just then, the back doors of the auditorium opened, and in came this little woman with a white scarf over her head. Suddenly it was so quiet, even people up in the balcony could hear the hushed voices from below, “Is that Mother Teresa?” Indeed, it was her. She happened to be in town to dedicate a new Sisters of Charity program and she had heard about this meeting. She came down the center aisle and everybody gasped as she came to the front, turned around, got down on her knees in front of the city council, raised her arms and said, “In the name of Jesus, make room for these children of God! When you reject them, you reject Jesus. When you affirm them, you embrace Jesus.” With her arms up in the air, she pleaded, “Please, please, please, please, please, in the name of Jesus, make room for these children of God! Make room for them in your neighborhoods.”

Now imagine for a moment you’re on the city council. There is Mother Teresa on her knees in front of you. Crews from several television stations have followed her into the auditorium, with cameras rolling. What are you going to do? Somebody say something; somebody do something.

One of the councilmen moved that the previous motion be reconsidered, there was a second, and then the city council did a complete 180 and voted unanimously in favor of opening those neighborhood halfway houses. There were hundreds of people packed into that auditorium, and not one of them uttered a word of opposition to the motion. Nobody shouted when it passed. Why? Because of the pleas of a little old woman who spoke with such authority? Everybody knew how Mother Teresa served God by serving the poor. Everybody knew that she wanted nothing but to live in the love and mercy of God. And seeing her there on her knees between the elected officials and the hushed crowd, everybody in that room wanted that life, the life her pleas represented, a life of love and mercy; and they wanted it more than any other life, for themselves and for everybody else, and together they moved one step closer to the kingdom where mercy reigns. They couldn’t say what made them change their minds, it was a strange power, it was a love stronger than all their fears.

Jesus doesn’t ride into town in front of an army. He doesn’t change the world by imposing his will on us. He turns the world upside down by refusing the path of coercion. He transforms the world by embracing the way of obedience, by doing what love of God and neighbor demand. That is the passion of his life to this final breath. We call this week holy because in the events we recall in prayer and ritual we enter the mystery of God’s power revealed in the life and death of Jesus.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” the Apostle Paul urges us. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit … Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil 2:3-4). Such words were rare and foreign in a city like Philippi, which isn’t to say they aren’t rare and foreign in a city like Nashville. The citizens of Philippi valued their connections to the imperial household, their privileges, and their advantages as subjects of Caesar. Roman culture valued force, competition, and honor-seeking, and humility was not considered a virtue. The perfect career of a young Roman aristocrat followed the cursus honorum, or “course of honor.” It was a ladder that comprised a mixture of military and political administration posts. Each office had a minimum age for election, and at each stage the upwardly mobile young man gained new responsibilities and new privileges. Lower classes of people developed their own sequence of offices that mimicked the upper classes. Roman society, much like ours, was built on the pursuit of status. You move up, and you socialize with the people who can help you move up even higher. But when everybody is only concerned about moving up the ladder, the only reason to look around is to check out the competition with a quick glance over the shoulder; others aren’t even seen.

We call this week holy because the final days of Jesus’ life on earth reveal to us the heart of reality, and it’s not relentless competition and survival, but rather relentless love and communion.

“You want to talk about status?” Paul seems to suggest. “OK, let’s talk about status.” Jesus had the highest status imaginable: equality with God. Only he did not regard that equality as something to be used for his own advantage. On the contrary. He emptied himself. He humbled himself. He “made himself of no reputation,” as the King James translation says it so beautifully. He climbed down the ladder, his mind on nothing but the will of God, loving us sinners with a passion and a vulnerability for which we have no words. On the cross, his career in reverse reached its end and he died the most cruel and degrading death, reserved for slaves and rebels against Rome’s rule.

And isn’t that just the way the world works? Isn’t that the way it has been since the dawn of humankind and will always be? Yes, that is part of the truth we must face when we look to the cross. This is what we are capable of doing to each other in the name of religion, in the name of justice, in the name of political convenience. But this dark Friday truth has a glorious, hopeful side: God vindicated the way of Jesus. God raised Jesus from the dead and gave him, the crucified servant, the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. We call this week holy, because the story of Jesus reveals who God is, and not despite the cross, but because of it. We look to the cross and we see love that goes all the way for the life of the world, for the sake of communion with us, for the sake of righteousness.

Today we sing, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because we do want him here, we do want him to rule and make all things right for all the children of God, especially the ones for whom no one wants to make room in their neighborhood. We sing, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because this humble one, riding on a donkey, comes with forgiveness, never tiring of showing us a world where all are neighbors and all are at home, never tiring of inviting us to live there.

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[1] Based on a story told by Tony Campolo http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/campolo_5218.htm